Curiosities of the Sky, Garrett Putman Serviss [free novel reading sites txt] 📗

probably between stars and meteor swarms revolving around them. Such periodic collisions might go on for ages without the meteors being exhausted by incorporation with the stars. This explanation appears all the more probable because one would naturally expect that flocks of meteors would abound in a close aggregation of stars. It is also consistent with Perrine's discovery -- that the globular star clusters are powdered with minute stars strewn thickly among the brighter ones.

In speaking of Professor Comstock's extraordinary theory of the Milky Way, the fact was mentioned that, broadly speaking, the nebulæ are less numerous in the galactic belt than in the comparatively open spaces on either side of it, but that they are, nevertheless, abundant in the broader half of the Milky Way which he designates as the front of the gigantic ``plough'' supposed to be forcing its way through the enveloping chaos. In and around the Sagittarius region the intermingling of nebulæ and galactic star clouds and clusters is particularly remarkable. That there is a causal connection no thoughtful person can doubt. We are unable to get away from the evidence that a nebula is like a seed-ground from which stars spring forth; or we may say that nebulæ resemble clouds in whose bosom raindrops are forming. The wonderful aspect of the admixtures of nebulæ and star-clusters in Sagittarius has been described in Chapter 1. We now come to a still more extraordinary phenomenon of this kind -- the Pleiades nebulæ.

The group of the Pleiades, although lying outside the main course of the Galaxy, is connected with it by a faint loop, and is the scene of the most remarkable association of stars and nebulous matter known in the visible universe. The naked eye is unaware of the existence of nebulæ in the Pleiades, or, at the best, merely suspects that there is something of the kind there; and even the most powerful telescopes are far from revealing the full wonder of the spectacle; but in photographs which have been exposed for many hours consecutively, in order to accumulate the impression of the actinic rays, the revelation is stunning. The principle stars are seen surrounded by, and, as it were, drowned in, dense nebulous clouds of an unparalleled kind. The forms assumed by these clouds seem at first sight inexplicable. They look like fleeces, or perhaps more like splashes and daubs of luminous paint dashed carelessly from a brush. But closer inspection shows that they are, to a large extent, woven out of innumerable threads of filmy texture, and there are many indications of spiral tendencies. Each of the bright stars of the group -- Alcyone, Merope, Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Atlas -- is the focus of a dense fog (totally invisible, remember, alike to the naked eye and to the telescope), and these particular stars are veiled from sight behind the strange mists. Running in all directions across the relatively open spaces are nebulous wisps and streaks of the most curious forms. On some of the nebular lines, which are either straight throughout, or if they change direction do so at an angle, little stars are strung like beads. In one case seven or eight stars are thus aligned, and, as if to emphasize their dependence upon the chain which connects them, when it makes a slight bend the file of stars turns the same way. Many other star rows in the group suggest by their arrangement that they, too, were once strung upon similar threads which have now disappeared, leaving the stars spaced along their ancient tracks. We seem forced to the conclusion that there was a time when the Pleiades were embedded in a vast nebula resembling that of Orion, and that the cloud has now become so rare by gradual condensation into stars that the merest trace of it remains, and this would probably have escaped detection but for the remarkable actinic power of the radiant matter of which it consists. The richness of many of these faint nebulous masses in ultra-violet radiations, which are those that specifically affect the photographic plate, is the cause of the marvelous revelatory power of celestial photography. So the veritable unseen universe, as distinguished from the ``unseen universe'' of metaphysical speculation, is shown to us.

A different kind of association between stars and nebulæ is shown in some surprising photographic objects in the constellation Cygnus, where long, wispy nebulæ, billions of miles in length, some of them looking like tresses streaming in a breeze, lie amid fields of stars which seem related to them. But the relation is of a most singular kind, for notwithstanding the delicate structure of the long nebulæ they appear to act as barriers, causing the stars to heap themselves on one side. The stars are two, three, or four times as numerous on one side of the nebulæ as on the other. These nebulæ, as far as appearance goes, might be likened to rail fences, or thin hedges, against which the wind is driving drifts of powdery snow, which, while scattered plentifully all around, tends to bank itself on the leeward side of the obstruction. The imagination is at a loss to account for these extraordinary phenomena; yet there they are, faithfully giving us their images whenever the photographic plate is exposed to their radiations.

Thus the more we see of the universe with improved methods of observation, and the more we invent aids to human senses, each enabling us to penetrate a little deeper into the unseen, the greater becomes the mystery. The telescope carried us far, photography is carrying us still farther; but what as yet unimagined instrument will take us to the bottom, the top, and the end? And then, what hitherto untried power of thought will enable us to comprehend the meaning of it all?

Stellar Migrations

To the untrained eye the stars and the planets are not distinguishable. It is customary to call them all alike ``stars.'' But since the planets more or less rapidly change their places in the sky, in consequence of their revolution about the sun, while the stars proper seem to remain always in the same relative positions, the latter are spoken of as ``fixed stars.'' In the beginnings of astronomy it was not known that the ``fixed stars'' had any motion independent of their apparent annual revolution with the whole sky about the earth as a seeming center. Now, however, we know that the term ``fixed stars'' is paradoxical, for there is not a single really fixed object in the whole celestial sphere. The apparent fixity in the positions of the stars is due to their immense distance, combined with the shortness of the time during which we are able to observe them. It is like viewing the plume of smoke issuing from a steamer, hull down, at sea: if one does not continue to watch it for a long time it appears to be motionless, although in reality it may be traveling at great speed across the line of sight. Even the planets seem fixed in position if one watches them for a single night only, and the more distant ones do not sensibly change their places, except after many nights of observation. Neptune, for instance, moves but little more than two degrees in the course of an entire year, and in a month its change of place is only about one-third of the diameter of the full moon.

Yet, fixed as they seem, the stars are actually moving with a speed in comparison with which, in some cases, the planets might almost be said to stand fast in their tracks. Jupiter's speed in his orbit is about eight miles per second, Neptune's is less than three and one-half miles, and the earth's is about eighteen and one-half miles; while there are ``fixed stars'' which move two hundred or three hundred miles per second. They do not all, however, move with so great a velocity, for some appear to travel no faster than the planets. But in all cases, notwithstanding their real speed, long-continued and exceedingly careful observations are required to demonstrate that they are moving at all. No more overwhelming impression of the frightful depths of space in which the stars are buried can be obtained than by reflecting upon the fact that a star whose actual motion across the line of sight amounts to two hundred miles per second does not change its apparent place in the sky, in the course of a thousand years, sufficiently to be noticed by the casual observer of the heavens!

There is one vast difference between the motions of the stars and those of the planets to which attention should be at once called: the planets, being under the control of a central force emanating from their immediate master, the sun, all move in the same direction and in orbits concentric about the sun; the stars, on the other hand, move in every conceivable direction and have no apparent center of motion, for all efforts to discover such a center have failed. At one time, when theology had finally to accept the facts of science, a grandiose conception arose in some pious minds, according to which the Throne of God was situated